


We'll Fall (Just Like Stars)

by xsaturated



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:34:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25659037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xsaturated/pseuds/xsaturated
Summary: Blaine’s seventeen, going on eighteen, when he puts Lima to his rearview mirror and keeps on driving.Or, the one where Blaine chooses a different direction after graduation.
Relationships: Blaine Anderson & Cooper Anderson, Blaine Anderson & Rachel Berry, Blaine Anderson & Sugar Motta, Blaine Anderson/Rachel Berry
Comments: 10
Kudos: 31





	We'll Fall (Just Like Stars)

**Author's Note:**

> The sheer volume of old or unfinished fic that's been languishing in my google drive for eight years finally got to me, so this is part one of my attempt to clean it all out and maybe finish some. This one was born of a resounding fuck you to the biphobia that glee heavily trafficked in.

Blaine’s seventeen, going on eighteen, when he puts Lima to his rearview mirror and keeps on driving.

Sugar’s heels are propped up on the dash, oversized sunglasses, shaped like stars, are shoved high up the bridge of her nose as she lazes in her seat, scrolling through playlists on her iPod.

There’s a whole stack of acceptance letters stuffed in his glove box, postmarks that cross the breadth of the entire country, and that feels like a victory in itself sometimes. That he could go just about anywhere if he wanted. That Lima, Ohio has no hold whatsoever on him anymore.

There have only ever really been two options for him though; east or west.

He chooses west.

\--

(It’s six days before Cooper finds out that he’s in LA, though if Sugar (and her prevailing  _ enormous  _ crush) had her way, it would have been much sooner.

It’s six weeks before Blaine finds a good coffee shop that’s within walking distance of most of his classes and doesn’t exclusively serve organic herbal teas.

It’s six months before Sugar lands a commercial spot ( _ fresh yourself up with a fresh up, yeah! _ ) that Blaine still isn’t entirely convinced that her father isn’t funding.

It’s six  _ years  _ before he sees  _ her _ again, but it’s not like he’d known he should be counting.)

\--

The first time he hears her name it seems so incredibly out of place in his little corner of this town.

Rachel has existed for so long in the permanent stasis that is East to him, buried somewhere between the newspaper clippings and Facebook updates that tell him she's getting what she deserves; the dream, the stage, the success. In his mind, when he thinks of her, he sees his Maria or the girl that sang, voice strong and clear, at her graduation ceremony.

Rachel Berry is New York to the bone, so there's no good reason that his favorite barista, whose hair changes color on a weekly basis and has two nose rings, should be calling that name, just gone eight in the morning at his Thursday coffee shop.

His head jerks around on sheer instinct and he's mostly just looking to confirm he'd misheard (because there will only ever be  _ one  _ Rachel Berry). Instead he locks eyes with soft brown eyes and the girl he hasn't seen since a stolen, silent afternoon spent sitting on his front porch after the Break Up, the summer before his senior year of high-school.

Her hair is shorter than he remembers and she's wearing her make-up a little differently, but the sundress she's wearing could have come out of her wardrobe from high school. She’s still so heartbreakingly _Rachel Berry_ that his voice catches in his throat, a little strained with what he’d like to name as surprise, as he asks, "Rachel?"

He's half out of his chair, fingers hurriedly steadying the coffee he nearly knocks flying over his notes in his haste.

"Blaine?"

She sounds a little uncertain, moving closer to his table and staring hard at him, at the hair and the glasses and his ink-smudged hands with a tiny wrinkle of confusion forming at her nose, before she smiles wide. "It  _ is _ you! I didn't know you were in LA."

It stings a little, the realization that she hadn't kept tabs on him, even in the abstract way he had on her, but he keeps smiling as he tilts his head towards his table, "Do you want to join me?"

That clearly doesn’t even warrant a reply, if the way she moves immediately to sit in the vacant seat opposite him is any indication. He busies his hands with chasing down pens and closing books and folders to clear them aside, ignoring the curious hike of an eyebrow that Thursday’s barista levels in his direction, and instead trying to determine why Rachel’s smile makes him nervous.

“What are you doing in LA?” he asks when he catches her trying to read the spines of the books he’s tucking away into his satchel from the corner of his eye.

“I have an audition,” she replies, her voice dipped low and confidential as she leans across the table, eyes a little manic with excitement as she all but hisses, “A _ pilot  _ for a new show. I could be on  _ TV _ .”

“I didn’t know that was something you wanted,” Blaine replies distractedly, left wondering exactly where that came from (and just where the _congratulations_ or the _wow, that’s amazing_ he’d intended on saying went and disappeared to) when her eyes narrow at him.

He notes the way her eyes flicker to his satchel and her lips purse before she takes a sip of her drink (from the smell alone he thinks it’s probably one of those organic herbal teas he does his best to avoid at all costs).

“Opportunities like this don’t just  _ come along  _ every day in show business,” she says after a moment, staring hard at his ink-stained hands before her eyes flicker back up to meet his, hard and inexplicably  _ disappointed _ . “Not that you’d know that, would you, Blaine?”

“Priorities change, Rachel,” he replies, just as pointedly, dragging a thumb along the strap of his satchel as he does his best to swallow the resentment that rises up his throat. “Not everyone wants to be a star.”

“ _ You  _ did.”

An uneasy silence follows her words, the hollow rhythm of his fingers drumming across the edge of the table before he shrugs a little, laughs and says, “People change too.”

She watches with something like disbelief as he smiles tightly, drags the strap of his satchel up over his shoulder and starts to stand. He isn’t even sure she hears him when he says, “I should be going, I have a class.”

Rachel just watches him, confusion winning out over annoyance, as he grabs his coffee and nods to her.

“You look good, Rachel,” he offers as he pauses behind his chair, fingers flexing around his coffee before he smiles again. “Good luck with the audition.”

\--

There’s a reason of course:

In the aftermath of the break up, battle-lines are drawn up and friends and territories are divided into equal shares.

He thinks it’s probably unnecessary, the lengths that their friends go to pick sides, because graduation and the distance does all the picking for them. Kurt takes Rachel and Finn (though the latter is entirely by proxy, if it were  _ that  _ easy to palm off family, Blaine could have at least gotten rid of Cooper out of the mess) and, or so it sometimes feels like, the entirety of New York in the break-up.

Blaine gets who is left behind (the ones who don’t still scowl at  _ him _ for breaking  _ Kurt’s _ heart that is) and Lima for the duration of the school-term.

He’s pretty sure that has to count as getting short-changed; Lima is most definitely a toxic asset and he doesn’t even  _ know  _ what he’s supposed to count Sugar as, though he thinks that somehow it’s ended up something close to  _ best friend _ .

In spite of it all, his senior year isn’t so bad.

It all adds up to the same thing in the end though; East or West.

East is Kurt and a city that might just be big enough to hold the both of them.

West is Cooper; an entire fucking  _ state  _ that isn’t big enough to contain Cooper’s ego when he gets going  _ and  _ leave room to breathe, let alone Blaine as well.

He still chooses west.

\--

“Where’ve you been?” Cooper asks when Blaine slides into the seat opposite him, still a little out of breath from the  _ brisk  _ walk he’d been forced to take from the coffee shop when he discovered what the time was.

“I got held up,” Blaine deflects, placing his satchel carefully next to his feet and sweeping a hand back through his hair.

Cooper is staring at him.

“I have a paper due,” Blaine protests, brushing a hand nervously over his cardigan and wishing he could catch a glimpse of his reflection. “I lost track of time.”

The slow smirk that starts to cross Cooper’s face is so practiced, so pointed, it makes Blaine want to bury his head into his napkin and never resurface because he  _ knows  _ what is coming next.

“Who is he, Blaine?”

Blaine wrinkles his nose and reaches for the menu, ignoring Cooper’s wiggling eyebrows and the delighted laugh because they may be  _ trying  _ to better their relationship, but that doesn’t mean he has to put up with this.

“Don’t be like that, little bro,” Cooper persists woundedly, and Blaine sometimes wonders if all that hokey acting advice Cooper places so much stock in has permanently affected his ability to hold a genuine conversation. “Your roommate said that you ran into someone from high school the other day. It’s Kurt isn’t it?”

“When were you talking to Sugar?” Blaine asks, narrowing his eyes when Cooper just shrugs at him.

He’s started to suspect of late that Cooper may be using Sugar (and her still terribly obvious crush) to keep tabs on him.

He wishes he could be surprised by that.

“No, I haven’t seen Kurt,” Blaine mutters back, eyeing the menu a little harder but not really seeing anything at all.

“It isn’t that Sebastian kid is it?” Cooper asks, a hand shooting out across the table to land on Blaine’s wrist. “You know I never liked him.”

Blaine tilts the menu so that Cooper can  _ see  _ him roll his eyes and shakes off the hand. “No, I haven’t seen Sebastian either. Last I heard he was in Milan. And I think it’s terribly ironic that Kurt was the one who broke my heart but  _ Sebastian  _ is the one you feel the need to protest.”

Cooper sniffs, drags his hand back to his side and smooths the table-cloth beneath his fingers. “He took advantage of you.”

“No he didn’t,” Blaine replies, tipping the menu back towards his face and frowning down at it.

Cooper stares hard across the table at him, blue eyes narrowed as he asks, “Well, who is it then?”

“Who?” Blaine tries.

This time it’s Cooper’s turn to roll his eyes. “Your roommate has a big mouth, Blaine. If you don’t tell me she will.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” Blaine insists, setting aside his menu with the realization that he isn’t going to be allowed to concentrate on it any time soon. “I bumped into Rachel getting coffee. That’s the story.”

“ _ Huh _ ,” Cooper replies, reaching for his own menu then falling suddenly, infuriatingly silent.

Blaine watches him theatrically lick a finger to turn the page of the menu (and kind of wants to point out how disgusting that actually is) and waits, because he knows Cooper is just doing this to mess with him and it doesn’t necessarily  _ mean  _ anything. Necessarily.

He sighs, loudly, and kicks out a foot under the table, smiling when it connects and Cooper lets out a satisfying yelp. The moment Cooper turns wounded eyes on him, clearly about to ask what  _ that  _ was for, Blaine says, “What do you mean,  _ huh? _ ”

“I just thought it was interesting,” Cooper replies. “I thought your whole experimental phase was over when you broke it off with tattoo girl.”

“I’m not  _ experimenting  _ with anything,” Blaine retorts, narrowing his eyes and leaning forward so he can lower his voice. “I got coffee with Rachel  _ twice  _ and we caught up. We were friends, you know.”

“Were,” Cooper hums in agreement.

It’s the last that Cooper has to say on the subject, though Blaine suspects that almost half of the patented smirks over the course of the night tell a different story entirely.

\--

Blaine is sixteen and so scared of losing the only friend he’s really got, the only boy who has ever seemed to relate to what it’s like to be  _ him _ , that he stares back at the girl who just kissed him in the middle of a coffee shop and doesn’t know what to say or what to think. He tells himself that the confusion of the last few days is something that is best left forgotten; hidden away with all the other parts of himself that confuse and terrify him.

And for a few years, he thinks he might even believe it.

\--

“Mind if I join you?”

His head snaps up, eyelashes fluttering rapidly in their efforts to refocus from the complex tangle of his handwriting to Rachel’s face, where she’s standing next to his table, clutching her cup with both hands.

“No, of course,” he replies, gathering up his notes from where they’ve spread across the table and doing his best to smile back at her.

His stomach twists guiltily at the reminder of their last meeting when she sinks down into the seat opposite him, busily smoothing her dress carefully over her thighs with one hand though he can tell she’s watching him from beneath her eyelashes.

Silence stretches between them, Blaine twirling a pen through his fingers until he forces himself to put it down and focus on her instead. “How did your audition go?”

Rachel’s eyes drop back to her cup. “I’m told that I can’t expect to hear back from them until at least next week.”

“No news is good news, right?” Blaine offers, though it’s clear that she’s about as convinced by that as he is.

He remembers all too keenly what it felt like to wait for news after an audition. No news was  _ never _ good news.

She smiles thinly, something vulnerable that he remembers from the high school girl swimming behind her eyes, before they close off.

“Distract me?” she asks, her fingers twisting together into knots. “Tell me about LA?”

He has a paper due tomorrow and dinner with Cooper planned for tonight, he has Sugar complaining whenever he’s at home that he is  _ neglecting their friendship  _ and he has a whole storm of quiet resentments that beg him to ask why do you want to know  _ now? _

Instead, he tells her.

He talks about Sugar and the apartment they still share, how he suspects Sugar’s dad may have actually brought out the building because he doesn’t know how it is that their rent doesn’t seem to be half as crippling as that of their neighbors. He tells her about Cooper, about how hard they’ve both been trying to be better brothers, because when it comes down to it they’re really the only family they’ve ever been able to count on.

He sings his way through Sugar’s commercial and laughs when Rachel joins in, unable to suppress the grin that crawls across his face at just how good they still sound together, so many years later. He talks and Rachel listens. It’s astoundingly easy, he finds, to tell her what she wants to know; they talk boys and then, hesitantly, girls, or rather  _ girl _ .

She doesn’t  _ say  _ anything, at that, just nods and plays with the lid of her coffee cup.

He wonders, for a moment, if it were Kurt in her place after all these years, whether he’d still have something to say on the subject. But there have been two  _ serious  _ boys since Kurt Hummel (three, if you include the confusing mess that had been whatever Sebastian Smythe qualified for during senior year) and both had been as complicated and brilliant in their own ways as his first.

He’s never met anyone quite like Rachel Berry though.

\--

When the road finally meets the coast Sugar demands they pull over as she pulls off her heels and flings them into the backseat. She leans across to grab wildly at his arm, her glasses slipping far enough down her nose that he catches a glimpse of her eyes, wide with a manic kind of excitement, and squeezes hard.

The strangest part is that Blaine feels it too.

He sometimes thinks New York is in his heart; he sees towering buildings of steel and glass behind his eyelids and grey skies in his sleep. Thick coats and pink noses buried deep into the folds of soft scarves, warming his hands around cups of coffee as he weaves through the masses beneath bright lights and the weight of a billion different dreams.

He doesn’t understand why even this first small glimpse of a shoreline, of blue and gold and  _ blue _ , makes his blood hum like electricity is in his veins.

The car groans to a tired halt in the grass, tires crackling through gravel as he pulls off the road in a place he’s pretty sure he shouldn’t be parking. Sugar doesn’t wait for him to stop before she throws open her door.

She curses when she finds the grass isn’t nearly as soft as she expected and jumps back into her seat, twisting and leaning precariously into the backseat to try and dig out her shoes.

Blaine is leaning against the hood of the car waiting for her when she re-emerges, huffing hair out of her face and having to readjust her sunglasses and her skirt before she launches herself at him and he sways violently with the momentum.

“Well, what are we  _ waiting  _ for?” she asks, tugging him down the slope that leads to the beach and the sound of the ocean, now that he listens for it.

The breeze is surprisingly cool, coming straight in off the water, and it catches at his clothing, bringing with it the smell of the sea and the sound of bird call, the roar of waves rolling over sand and crashing into rocks. The sun is jarringly bright before he slides his sunglasses into place and Sugar pulls him by the hand down the bank towards the sand, picking her way through tussock and rock in heels that Blaine’s pretty sure he couldn’t even walk in.

The heels are tossed aside once they reach the sand and Sugar tears off towards the water, her laughter wild and unchecked and Blaine’s mildly concerned that she might just dive right in and keep swimming. Instead she stops once she reaches the wet sand, wiggling her toes into the muck and sighing happily as she tips her head back, throws her arms out wide and waits for the next wave to roll in.

Blaine watches for a moment, smiling to himself before he carefully toes off his shoes and peels off his socks, collects Sugar’s heels from the sand, before he follows her footprints through the sand.

He pauses next to her, digging his toes into the wet ground and grinning as he tips his head back to the sun, closes his eyes and listens to the roll of water wash in around them, surprisingly cold as it hits his ankles.

Sugar’s fingers clutch hard at his wrist, working their way down to his hand before she squeezes it hard, swinging their arms between them as she laughs out, “You and me, Blainey-baby, this town will never know what’s about to hit it!”

Blaine doesn’t even flinch at the nicknames anymore. Sometimes he wonders when that happened.

Without warning she wrenches his arm up, punching the sky like they’re on a victory lap, and bellows to the empty beach, “ _ Get ready for us, LA! _ ”

She reaches over to poke him in the ribs when he doesn’t automatically repeat her and he resists the urge to roll his eyes, keeping them firmly shut instead as he dutifully echoes her, “Get ready for us, LA!”

They keep going, louder and louder, until Sugar collapses into his side giggling and they fall into comfortable silence. Blaine opens his eyes to watch the tide roll in, creeping up his legs and splashing higher with each wave until they’re forced to retreat back to dry sand.

The first day of his life anew starts like this: with sand between his toes and Sugar’s laughter in his ears. With “Beverly Hills” roaring from the speakers of his car and Sugar screaming along with it when they get the first glimpse of LA in the distance.

He thinks that if it’s New York that has his heart, than maybe he has California in his soul.

\--

“Are you here every Thursday?” Rachel asks as she sinks into the seat opposite him, her fingers brushing nervously over the edge of his textbook as she tries to peek at what he’s reading.

“I have a class in the morning,” Blaine replies, leaning back into his seat and smiling over at her. “I come here after to go over my notes.”

He tilts his head a little, taking in the nervous energy that’s burning through her eyes and the restless way her fingers tap across the sides of her cup before he bursts out into a wide smile. “You got the part.”

Her smile shadows his own, the carefully shuttered expression on her face cracking open as she leans forward in her chair, practically  _ beaming  _ as she laughs, “I could be on  _ TV _ .”

Blaine’s notes go entirely forgotten as he leans forward in his own chair, reaching out to curl their fingers together over his textbook as he says, “You  _ will  _ be on TV. They would have to be  _ idiots  _ to let Rachel Berry slip through their fingers.”

She smiles down at her coffee cup, drags a thumb across the lid, and says, “I guess it looks like I’m going to be in LA for a while, now.”

He doesn’t even try to pretend it isn’t the best news he’s heard in a long time.

\--

Blaine is eighteen and drunk enough that he thinks he’s half-in-love with everything he sees, when he’s given reason to think back to that awful, confusing week after Rachel’s house party in sophomore year.

The girl is a tiny thing with long dark hair, a pretty smile and long sweeping lines of black ink that branch out across her bare shoulders when she shrugs out of her jacket. He traces the path of those lines with his eyes, following the path of the zip that drags down the length of her spine until her dress slips from her shoulders and slithers to the floor. He doesn’t realize how far he’d followed her until the door of her dorm snaps shut behind him and he traces fingers over the ink, across one shoulder, down the nape of her neck to the first notch of her spine then down where the lines all flow together until the shape makes itself suddenly clear.

“It’s a tree,” he declares triumphantly, placing a kiss gently at its center.

“ _ Yggdrasil _ ,” she replies as she turns her head to look over her shoulder at him.

Her hair is dark brown (this week) and she doesn’t have the nose-rings yet, but she has the World Tree tattooed the length of her entire spine and he doesn’t know it yet, but she makes a mean Medium Drip.

She  _ laughs  _ at him when his brain catches up to what he’s doing, what he’s  _ done _ , and when he starts  _ rambling  _ about how incredibly, unequivocally  _ gay  _ he is she shuts him up with a kiss and murmurs, “Yeah, me too.”

It isn’t the first time that he’s forced to ask if maybe he doesn’t know himself quite as well as he thinks he does.

It  _ is _ the first time he listens.

\--

“You’re really bad at this whole gay, best friend thing, you know?” Sugar muses loudly, stretching a little further across the couch as she turns and levels him with a  _ look. _ “You’re lucky I put up with you, buddy.”

“How am I neglecting my duties this time?” Blaine retorts, a hint of a smile curling at his lips because this conversation is a familiar one.

“I want to see Rachel too, you know,” Sugar pouts, digging her sock-covered toes into his thigh pointedly. “Stop hogging her, I haven’t seen anyone from McKinley in like,  _ forever _ .”

“I’m not  _ hogging  _ her,” Blaine retorts as he swats away her toes. “It’s not like we  _ planned  _ on any of these meetings, they just happened.”

The pointed look Sugar directs his way tells him  _ exactly _ how much she doesn’t believe him.

\--

This time around he doesn’t even bother to unpack his satchel and his coffee is still sitting untouched in front of him when Rachel approaches his table, watching curiously as he gets to his feet.

“I thought we could go for a walk today,” he offers as he shoulders his satchel and hooks a thumb under the strap, grabbing his coffee with his other hand. “There’s a park only a block or so away.”

They end up walking in comfortable silence, the sounds of the city filtering in around them and Blaine can’t help but sneak glances in her direction. Her hair is curling in soft, dark waves around her face and the jewel-bright green of her dress flutters around her knees as she walks.

When she catches him looking he says, “Tell me about New York.”

She stares at him,  _ hard _ , like she’s wondering what his motivations are before she replies, “I shouldn’t have to tell you. You were supposed to be there.”

“Kurt didn’t want me there,” Blaine shoots back immediately.

She wheels around on him, cutting off his path to jab a finger at his chest and snap, “Kurt doesn’t  _ own  _ the entire city, Blaine Anderson. You didn’t even  _ tell  _ anyone you were running off to LA.”

“I told Sugar,” he replies, eyeing the fingernail that’s digging into his shirt. “And Tina.  _ And  _ Artie. It was hardly a secret.”

“You didn’t tell  _ me _ ,” she replies, before biting her lip and looking away. “You didn’t even tell  _ Kurt.  _ He was still expecting to run into you on the street at any moment. We had to find out from Santana, of all people, that you weren’t in New York.”

“Kurt broke up with  _ me _ , Rachel. I didn’t owe him anything,” Blaine replies slowly, folding his arms across his chest and leaning back, away from her. “And if you didn’t unfriend me on Facebook you wouldn’t have had to find out from Santana.”

“He’s my best friend,” she replies quietly, her hands dropping back to her sides as she steps back and stares up at him. “He was my first friend, really. It was hard on him too, you know.”

“Yeah,” Blaine laughs back, taking a sip from his coffee to hide the bitterness in his voice and finding that it’s gone cold. “I can imagine how hard it must have been for him.”

He starts walking again, determinedly ignoring the frustration on her face even though he  _ knows  _ that he’s being childish, he put his feelings for Kurt to bed a long time ago.

But he knows for a fact now that nobody ever  _ really  _ forgets the injustices they suffered in high school.

“You don’t  _ get  _ it,” she snaps after him and he can hear the slap of her ballet-flats against the sidewalk as she stalks him down. “You’re not  _ like  _ us. People  _ like  _ you, they always  _ liked  _ you. Kurt and I are the same. We’re  _ different _ , we have to stick together because nobody else  _ wants  _ to stick with us-”

Blaine grimaces and tosses his coffee into a trashcan, wondering exactly how, even all these years later, Kurt Hummel is still causing him grief.

“I’m not asking you to  _ choose _ , Rachel. I don’t know what you want from me,” he replies, not even bothering to look over his shoulder as he veers off the sidewalk into the field of grass, scattered with trees, that passes for a park in this part of town.

“He thought you were going to get back together,” Rachel calls after him and he freezes, fingers convulsively clenching at his sides with the effort it takes not to react. “It was supposed to be _us_ in New York, Blaine. Instead you ran as far in the opposite direction as you possibly could and you just _gave up_.”

“I didn’t give up  _ anything _ ,” he scoffs back. “I found out what  _ I  _ wanted. There’s a difference.”

She doesn’t try to stop him when he leaves.

\--

What they don’t get is this:

Blaine has a shelf full of cameras, lined up high above the window in his bedroom. They range from old, delicate machines that have all kinds of tricks and latches to keep the film from being ruined to brand new, top of the range digital contraptions.

On clear nights Blaine chooses a camera to suit his mood, piles it into his battered old car and drives until the city is left behind him. He sets up camp out of the valley, somewhere high and up in the hills, sets the timer and lies back in the grass to watch the night.

Even on the clearest nights, pollution blocks out most of them. Some nights there’s nothing at all except the orange haze which turns the horizon sour, but he sets the exposure time anyway, pulls on his gloves and jacket and hat when it’s cold, and watches. On the best nights he can pick them out, mapping constellations with his fingers.

It reminds him of dark, quiet nights tracing shapes between freckles and beauty spots over Sebastian’s bare skin. Of thinking Kurt Hummel’s eyes were the brightest damn things he’d ever see. He thinks he’s probably spent his whole damn life stargazing.

At the end of the year, he will take his time painstakingly sorting through each shot he gets, until he finds the ones he wants.

His advisor told him once that his preoccupation is kitschy, that the last thing anyone in LA wants to see on a gallery wall is more fucking stars.

Blaine had smiled at that.

He has no intentions on any gallery walls.

\--

She doesn’t show at the coffee shop on the Thursday after that.

\--

Or the one after that.

\--

He gives himself a week to wallow.

It’s nearing the end of summer, his show at Six Flags has already run its course; there’s nothing he has to do, nowhere he has to go, and maybe he  _ should  _ be making an effort to keep himself busy. To go out and see his friends, make plans, actively not  _ think  _ about it; but he’s seventeen and his first boyfriend, his first  _ everything  _ really, just broke up with him.

So he gives himself one week to wallow before he’ll force himself to get back up again.

His parents leave him to it and he suspects they’re secretly pleased to be kept so busy by their work, lest they have to actually engage with their son when he’s not even pretending to be okay. He isn’t disappointed.

It’s not like he expected anything different; he’s always healed better on his own.

It’s three days into his allotted week when he finds her waiting on his doorstep, her hands clasped together in front of her and looking like she doesn’t know what she’s doing there.

She’s never been to his house without someone to serve as a buffer between them, all of their private rehearsals for West Side Story had been held at her house with her dads puttering around in the background (occasionally jumping in to harmonize on songs like they didn’t even realize they were doing it) and there’s no Kurt or Finn hovering over her shoulder this time to break the silence when he simply stares at her, uncomprehending. He’d barely had the motivation to switch from pajamas to sweatpants that morning and he hasn’t brushed his hair for three days.

Truth be told, he doesn’t know what she’s doing there either.

They sit side by side on the steps of his porch, the empty air between them getting heavier by the moment for the lack of words neither of them can seem to find. When she finally speaks it’s as she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and he knows that she’s lying.

“Kurt isn’t doing any better than you are, you know.”

Blaine thinks that he knows exactly how Kurt is doing: Kurt is organizing what he is taking with him from his wardrobe, he is methodically working through the list Blaine helped him draw up two months ago. He is triple-checking every detail. Kurt is  _ busy _ .

Kurt is  _ not _ wallowing.

Her hand presses down over his as she says, “He didn’t  _ want  _ to do this, Blaine. But it’s for the best you know, for both of you.”

Blaine thinks he liked it better when she wasn’t talking.

“Did he send you over here?” He asks finally, picking at the flaking paint with his fingernails and determinedly staring at his mother’s dying flower beds because at least  _ they  _ aren’t trying to tell him that this is  _ for the best. _

“No.” 

He sees her look over at him from the corner of his eye but he doesn’t turn his head. It’s clear to him, at least, that she’s already chosen her side. He isn’t surprised to find it isn’t his.

“I’m going to miss you,” she finally says, pressing her hand a little harder over his until he turns to look at her.

He wants to tell her that he’s going to miss her as well, but he finds that he can’t say much at all in the face of realizing he hasn’t just lost his boyfriend, he’s losing her as well. Instead he turns his hand over and slides their palms together, winds his fingers through hers and stares down at the flowerbeds in silence.

He’s really tired of people doing what they think is  _ for the best _ .

Just for once he wishes someone would ask him what he thinks.

\--

“ _ No _ ,” Blaine declares when he arrives at the coffeeshop and promptly turns to try and leave.

Apparently they’d been anticipating this turn of events.

Two long strides has Cooper in striking distance to grab him by the arm, then locked into place with an arm around his shoulders.

“This is an intervention,” Cooper announces cheerfully as he guides Blaine to his seat. “I even brought you a coffee.”

Sugar smiles sunnily across at him between bites of a cookie that’s shaped like a star and nudges one of the cups across the table towards him with her knuckles.

There are times when Blaine strongly suspects her constant affirmations that her father is in no way affiliated with the mafia are, in fact, Sugar’s way of telling him that her father is affiliated with the mafia. This is one of those times.

“You’ve been a total Grinch lately,” Sugar says, snapping a point off her star and offering it to him with a sweet smile. “Except instead of stealing Christmas you’re stealing fun.  _ All _ the fun. I can’t live with that kind of toxic aura negatively impacting my chi.”

Cooper nods along with her, wearing a caricature of a solemn expression, and Blaine kind of wants to try and make a break for the door. If there’s anything that he wants  _ less  _ than another run-in with Rachel, it’s a run-in with Rachel while he’s with his idiot brother and his insane roommate and they’re trying to stage a very misguided intervention.

“I am not a Grinch,” Blaine points out sulkily and bites down on the piece of cookie he was offered. “She said I  _ gave up- _ ”

“- on your dreams,” Cooper finishes for him, raising an eyebrow, though he doesn’t elaborate any further.

“I didn’t give up,” Blaine scoffs, tempted to throw the rest of his cookie at Cooper’s head. “I found a new direction.”

Cooper doesn’t even bother to hide his smirk as he laughs out, “I bet you did.”

Blaine throws his hands up, rolling his eyes towards the ceiling as he groans, “What are you,  _ six? _ ”

“-  _ years _ older than you, little brother, so you should listen to my advice.”

“Lean into the pose?” Blaine mocks, fingers clutching hard at his coffee cup. “Tornado of Emotion? What’s the advice this time, Coop?”

“Don’t be a smart-ass for one,” Cooper replies airily. “And maybe if you didn’t look so  _ miserable  _ half the time we might believe you about this  _ new direction  _ thing.”

“I am not  _ miserable _ ,” Blaine insists firmly. “I’m  _ busy _ . It’s not like I don’t sing anymore.”

“To an empty store,” Cooper retorts, “Or bored customers if you’re lucky. You’re too talented for that. Hell, I don’t even  _ know  _ what it is that you’re studying, do you?”

“I thought this was about Rachel,” Blaine deflects, because he knows if Cooper gets going he’ll never hear the end of it.

Cooper has never understood why he isn’t pursuing acting or why he isn’t chasing a record deal with all the other starving artists and actors populating bars and clubs, the city over. Sometimes Blaine doesn’t understand either. All he really knows is that there are a million possibilities out there for him, more stars to hang a dream on than the sky can hold, but the stars in this city aren’t made for wishes. Blaine doesn’t want to lose himself to this city.

Even after all this time, Cooper still hasn’t figured that out yet.

“Sure,” Cooper concedes finally and Blaine watches the face of his brother disappear once again, sealed up tight behind the horrific mask he seems to forget he’s even wearing most days. “Let’s talk about Rachel.”

\--

She doesn’t even bother to go to the counter this time around.

It’s been a full month since he last saw her but she still looks  _ angry _ , her face set in a determined look that he recognizes well from his junior year of high school as she storms towards him, drags the seat opposite him out and drops into it.

“You’re a  _ child _ ,” she says before he can even open his mouth.

He raises both eyebrows, fingers dawdling across the pages of his textbook as he thinks to close it before they drop away instead.

“You act like you’re the only one who got hurt when you and Kurt broke up,” she continues, jabbing a finger sharply across the table at him and narrowing her eyes.

“Why are you making this about Kurt?” Blaine replies steadily, his voice determinedly even as he forces himself to really  _ look _ at her. “This is about  _ you _ , Rachel. Why are  _ you  _ acting like you’re the one who got their heart broken?”

“He’s my best friend,” she protests, in lieu of an actual answer, like she can brush him off so easily when she so blatantly looks away at the question.

He thinks he knows the answer. Has always known, really, since he was sixteen years old and a girl he barely knew kissed him in the middle of a coffee shop.

“I haven’t seen Kurt in six years,” he reminds her quietly.

“You were supposed to be there,” she says. “It was going to be you and me and Kurt. Not me and Kurt and you in LA with other boys and some  _ girl  _ and Sugar  _ Motta _ .”

He cocks his head a little, can’t help but smile as he says, “I missed you too Rachel.”

She throws a pen at him.

  
  


\--

The official catalogue calls the installation  _ When I See Stars _ . In his head he calls it  _ Paparazzi. _

“I don’t get it,” Rachel whispers, behind a hand, before she eventually sits up with a loud sigh.

Blaine tries not to snort, rolling his head towards her just enough that he doesn’t have to look away from the mesmerizing swirl of light and the dark, bruised sky behind it. It had cost him a small fortune to have them printed as he wanted, to the scale he wanted, but the effect is worth it.

Even  _ if _ the gallery floors aren’t exactly the most comfortable for lying on.

“Of course you don’t,” he sighs, sitting up as well and taking the time to marvel at the sight of all of the attendees lying on the floor in their fancy clothing, staring up at the ceiling. Sugar is nearby, chatting eagerly with one of his classmates in a low hushed voice. Somewhere in the corner he can hear Cooper singing that damn Credit Rating commercial to some giggling woman with no idea what she’s getting herself in for.

“They’re pretty?” Rachel offers hesitantly.

He’ll take it.

\--

The further west they drive, the hotter it gets.

He thinks it should probably be  _ too  _ hot, but when it starts to feel like the steering wheel may actually be melting between his fingers and Sugar crawls into the back seat and stretches out, occasionally bemoaning that they should have flown instead, it’s like the heat is sinking right into his bones. Like he’s drinking all that sunlight up, storing it away for better days.

It makes him feel like he’s driving towards the sun and Lima is just a tiny little shadow, left far, far behind him.

Somehow, it feels like a promise.


End file.
